Architalks: Architecture of Change

In the last few decades the field of architecture has rapidly evolved. Older (unfulfilled) concepts like prefabrication have given way to new means of digital fabrication, and the very way we build seems to forever be poised to make the technological leap to the next generation of building. Yet somehow, we never seem to get there.

Elytra Filament Pavilion

A generation of architects chomping at the bit to lead the profession, inspired by the community service ethos of Samuel Mockbee, studying through their academic years of the ultra-precise digital fabrication of Frank Gehry and Erik Owen Moss find themselves at a crossroads of technology and civilization that scarcely seemed possible just two decades ago.

However, in an era of 3D printing and rapid prototyping capabilities, the largest infrastructure project on the American agenda is an eighteen to thirty foot tall border wall, some two-thousand miles long. At a time where our technological capabilities seem something out of science fiction, when the battlefield is transitioning from boots and rifles to UAVs and cyber warfare, the greatest nation of the world is about to embark on a multi-billion dollar investment that’s only slightly more advanced than a medieval city wall.

Monteriggioni – 13th Century Border Wall

It remains to be seen what forms the next great architectural movement will take, if there is one. The greatest architectural minds are working hard today to find solutions to some of mankind’s greatest challenges. Refugee housing crises, climate change, and a host of other challenges are not just technical problems, but social and economic problems. It’s my sincere hope that as a society we begin to invest as much in solving these problems as we so building walls and dropping bombs.

Whether we realize it or not, we live in a designed world. The question is: will this be a design for destruction or for a sustainable new world that we can safely hand down to our children and our children’s children?